


Parental Ricknapping

by spinetrick



Category: Gravity Falls, Rick and Morty
Genre: 80s AU, Bad Parenting, Established Relationship, Gen, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, M/M, Minor Violence, Stanchez Micro-Bang 2016, Swearing, much bickering and awkwardness, somewhat dysfunctional relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-29
Updated: 2016-10-29
Packaged: 2018-08-22 14:10:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8288531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spinetrick/pseuds/spinetrick
Summary: Fresh from the biggest job he and Stan have ever pulled, Rick is flush with cash and ready to waltz back into his daughter’s life after four years without a single phone call. Stan is just trying to hold things together until they can fake their own deaths, retire to a nice island in the Caribbean, and forget about everything.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Possibly the first fanfic I've ever written, definitely the first fanfic I've ever posted on the internet. Adjust your expectations accordingly.
> 
> Produced for the Stanchez Bang 2016.  
> Check out the beautiful companion illustrations from my lovely artists [@animatedegoist](http://animatedegoist.tumblr.com/) and [@professor-cinnamon-roll](http://professor-cinnamon-roll.tumblr.com/)! I'm unworthy <3  
> [X](http://animatedegoist.tumblr.com/post/152408557495) [X](http://professor-cinnamon-roll.tumblr.com/post/152283592120)
> 
> Thanks to my excellent beta [@lieutenantruby](http://lieutenantruby.tumblr.com) for keeping me on track and not kicking my head in for whining so much about a 4k fic.

Stan has done a lot of questionable shit in his life, but after meeting Rick, he’s found there are still plenty of exciting new things he’s never tried before, and exciting new lows to hit.  Snorting nutmeg.  Embezzling money from one of the most dangerous criminal organizations in the Americas.  Staking out a damn middle school.

Inside the red Cadillac idling across the street, Stan sighs.  The road is dark and wet from rain, sky grey and milky overhead.   He’s still having trouble adjusting to the cold, and shivers under his layers of second-hand clothes.  

"I feel like a creep lurking out here like this,” he says.  

Rick grunts beside him, folded up in the passenger seat.  He’s practically draped in a cheap leather jacket that’s two sizes too large for him, scruffy and sunken-eyed.  

“This would, y’know, be a lot easier if we could just go to the kid’s house.”

“Her bitch of a mother can’t know I’m in the fucking state,” Rick says. “I’ve told you this, Stanley, I-I’ve got like five restraining orders.”

“And you’re sure this is the school she goes to?”

“It’s the address in the fucking letter, isn’t it?” Rick snaps, waves a worn folded piece of paper at him.

“Yeah, but how old is that thing? Are you sure she even still goes here?”

“H-hey, here’s a - here’s a suggestion, Stanley: stop complaining and just help me - help me keep an eye out.”

Rick turns the paper between his thumbs and looks out the window away from him.   Stan knows there were more letters, but this is the only one Rick still has - or the only one Rick has let Stan see.  Four pages of childish but tightly spaced writing - she talks about their new house, how boring it is, how much she misses home, some science fair she won, and at the end - the pleas for contact: an address in Michigan, telephone numbers for her mother and grandparents, and the name of her new school.  

Which is where they are now.  This is the side trip he had promised Rick back at the start of this whole mess - a diversion into to see his daughter before they meet up with Stan’s buddy-of-a-buddy to get disappeared for good.  Give her some money for the future, say some goodbyes, whatever.  The sooner they’re back on the move, Stan thinks, the better.  

Stan looks back outside, drums his fingers on the dash.  He spots a brown-red stain on the light leather seating.

“Oh, come on, Rick - I just got my baby back, and you’re already trashing it.”

“That’s nothing,” Rick grumbles, “You can barely - barely see it.”

Stan tries to flake it off with his thumbnail.  “I gotta put some towels down, man, stop you bleeding all over the damn upholstery.”

“Fuck it, I’ll buy you a new car, Stanley.  Stop - stop busting my ass.” Rick shifts in his seat crankily and winces, his shirt half-undone around his bandaged shoulder.  

He pulls a prescription bottle out of his pocket and shakes out a handful of small red pills.  Stan watches the tense hunch of his shoulders as he downs the pills dry.  

Rick had insisted on no doctors when he got shot, so Stan had cleaned the wound and stitched it up in a motel room under Rick’s shaky direction (always had been good with his fingers, grateful not for the first time that he had sat through his mother’s sewing lessons).  The place looked like a goddamn murder scene by the time he was done.  He didn’t sleep that night, watching Rick curled up on the bed, grey and feverish, wondering if Rick had lost too much blood, wondering how he would know if he had.  Stan had kept feeling his wrist for a pulse, sure that his heartbeat was too faint or too slow, fucking terrified that Rick would die quietly without Stan even realizing.  

But the next morning Rick was awake and lucid and alive - and in a lot of pain, but at least listening to him swear and cry was better than listening to nothing at all.  

Two weeks on the road and a lot of pills later, and Rick seems almost as good as new .  So Stan doesn’t put up a real fight - he lets Rick do what he wants, pop as many painkillers as he wants.  

The silence is broken by laughter and screaming from kids milling about on the lawn.

"Look at all those - those miserable little fucks,” Rick says.

“Mm.”  Stan considers them.  They look, on average, relatively carefree and happy.  Kids being kids, running around.  

Rick leans back in his seat.  "You - you liked school much, Stanley?"

"Hell, I couldn’t stand it at the time.” Stan scratches his jaw.  “Everything was a lot simpler back then, though."

"I f-fucking hated it.  Bunch of kids in a box, do this, do that, memorize this, don’t fucking think for yourself, just learn to parrot what some old-ass impotent goon tells you to do.  Waste of my time.  that’s how they… how they control you.  so you never think for yourself, never question the machine, just work and buy and all to

“Can it, Rick, you sound like a fuckin’ hippy.”

“I’m - I’m right though.  I always said -” Rick breaks off mid-sentence, staring over Stan’s shoulder.

Stan follows his gaze to a girl in a red coat walking alone out of the crowd, stepping onto the pavement, and then Rick is already up and out of the car before Stan can say anything.

“Hey, wait up!” he shouts after him.

Stan has never seen Rick at such a complete loss before.  

Rick touches her shoulder and the girl looks up.

“Beth?”

The armful of books she’s carrying falls to the pavement.

“Dad…?”

She throws her arms around him with a choked sob.  

“Hey, hey there, it’s okay..” He puts his scrawny arms around her.  

She stares at him with wet, shining eyes.  “What are you doing here?”

“Are you - are you hungry sweetie? Let’s get some dinner, I’ll buy you - I’ll buy you anything you want,”

“Wait,” she says, wiping her eyes, thoroughly overwhelmed, “I - I have tennis practice...”

“That’s some meaningless bullshit, you want to waste the limited time you have on this earth hitting balls back and forth? Come spend some time with your old man haha.  Who’s gonna - who’s gonna care if you skip once?”

He grabs her hand and starts pulling her towards the car.  

A teacher comes up, acting casual but eying them for the suspicious characters they are.  

"Is everything okay here, Beth?" She smiles tightly.  

"Everything's fine,” Beth sniffs.  “Mrs. Schwartz, this is my dad."

"Oh…” She appraises him - unwashed, shirt undone and untucked, hair on end.  “Well... it's a pleasure to finally meet you, Mr. Sanchez.  Your daughter is a very gifted little girl."

“She's the - she's the light of my life, y’know,” Rick says, squeezing her shoulder a bit too tight.  

“You have a nice day now.”

Stan looks after her, thinking - she definitely will remember Rick’s face, probably note something down, call Rick’s wife with concerns, and then if she pays attention to the news…. Fuck, he can’t think about it.  They’re leaving a trail a mile wide and all they can do is keep moving and hope their luck holds out.  

He says, “Let’s get moving.”

The girl starts, noticing Stan for the first time.  Rick laughs and slaps him on the shoulder. "Beth,  this is Stanley.  He's - he's my business associate.”

Stan musters his most reassuring, child-friendly smile and, uncertain how to proceed, shakes her small hand.  

The girl has sharp features and big brown eyes, pale with long auburn hair pulled into braids.  Stan can't see much of Rick in her at first but then she smiles guardedly and Stan can see that her teeth are crooked in the exact same way...

“Stanley, m-make some space in the back.”

Stan throws bags of clothing and empty fast food cartons and some godforsaken ham radio set that Rick saw out for garbage in the street and insisted on taking with them...

“Alright, there ya go, kid.”

She climbs in wordlessly.  

Stan fishes his glasses out of his jacket and starts the engine.  

“Wait! Stop!” The girl shrieks from the back.  Stan, startled, slams the brakes - Rick jerks forward and knocks his head on the windshield with a thunk.  

“Aren’t you going to put on your seatbelts?” she says.  

“What?” Stan half turns in his seat.  

Her face is deeply earnest.  “Don’t you know how dangerous it is? if you don’t wear a seatbelt, you’re two times as likely to be killed in a car crash.  And car crashes account for such and such percent of deaths - ”

Stan, frowning, looks back at Rick, who’s rubbing his forehead and grimacing.

“She - she’s got a point there, Stanley, with your fucking driving…”

Rick tries to give confused directions to a place he saw on the way in, until Stan sees a sign for a strip mall diner and pulls in.  It’s a dark brown stained kind of place, empty except for them and a couple of old ladies from some seniors event.  

Stan feels conspicuous in his ill-fitting jacket, very aware of the bruises on his face, of Rick with his bloodshot eyes and busted arm fumbling with the menu and this big-eyed schoolgirl fidgeting nervously and glancing at the door.  

The waitress at least seems wholly disinterested as she fills their glasses.  

"Hey Beth, this is a special - special kind of - kind of day, okay, so you - order anything you want," Rick says.  

Beth gives him a long look over the menu.  “Anything?”

So Beth ends up with a spread of chocolate chip and strawberry pancakes, ice cream, milkshake…

Rick empties his flask into his glass.

“So.  How’s school?”

“Umm,” she says, “It’s okay.  I’m at the top of my class, and I gave a presentation on some science trash and I won first place at the science fair last year,

“Ha, of course you won some prizes, they - they give out certificates of excellence to anyone who can tie their shoes and not shit their pants on a daily basis.  

Beth’s face drops and she looks down at her plate.  

“None of that means anything when you get out into the real world.”  When he belatedly notices her disappointment, he says, “Oh, but I’m - I’m so proud of you, sweetie - I’ll be proud of you no matter what!”

Stan stays quiet, eats his food, does nothing to fill the awkward pause in conversation.  He tries to imagine Rick’s life before, a daughter and a wife and a two-story house in the suburbs, reconcile that with the man he knows...

He wonders about his own place in this picture.

“Where have you been though?” Beth asks. “Mom said you went to South America…”

“Yeah, yeah, I spent a little time in Ecuador, little time in Colombia, and Germany... I’ve been - I’ve been very busy.”.    
Beth worries her lip.  “Mom said you were a criminal.”  
“What - no, I'm - I'm helping people, Beth, I'm helping everybody have a good time. Don't listen to what your - your mother says, she's biased, she's - she’s unhinged,you know.”

“But what do you _do_ ,” Beth says, insistent.

“Well, sweetie, we were working for some gentlemen in Colombia who were in a… v-very lucrative business.  “

“What kind of business?” she says.

“Let’s see, h-how do I explain…” Rick rubs his brow.  “Did they ever teach you about serotonin receptors in school-”

“Breeding parakeets,” Stan bursts in.   

Rick shoots him a look, but Stan continues, “Me and Rick, we bred… parakeets.  Y’know, rare birds.  Tropical.  Sold ‘em to collectors.”

“Y-yeah,” Rick continues, finally playing along, a little half-heartedly.  “And Stanley here, he would - he takes care of the birds on their flight to the the States, makes sure no one disturbs them, and - everybody gets to have a lot of fun, w-with the parakeets… and we all make a lot of money, right - right, Stanley?”

“..Right,” Stan says, internally wincing as he glances over at the girl, but her skeptical gaze is gone and she looks wholly enchanted.

“You got to take care of parakeets all day?” she says, wonderingly.  

“B-but we didn’t - we didn’t get rich just from selling parakeets, sweetie.  The p-people we worked for you know, they were… they were greedy, they wanted all the money to themselves.  They didn’t r-respect me or how important my work was.  So me and Stan, we went and took the money they owed us, and a l-little more for our pain.”  He pauses to drink.  “There’s a lesson for you, Beth, d-don’t let anybody… p-push you around, you gotta - you gotta fight back.”

“...How did you get the money back?” she asks.

“D-doesn’t matter, but that reminds me that I have - I have something I gotta give you Beth.”  He pats his pockets and produces a thick battered envelope.    
“You're gonna grow up without a care in the world, sweetheart, won't have to worry about a thing.   Gonna have it all taken care of.”

She opens the envelope hesitantly, sees the money, and looks utterly betrayed.

“I don’t want this,” she says.

“Okay, well -”

She practically throws it on the table.  “I want to go home.”

“Hey, come on -”

“I _said_ , I want to go home,” she says, wiping her eyes.

“You’ve - you’ve barely touched your pancakes..”

“I’m not hungry,” she says, then, getting choked up - “You’re just going to leave again, aren’t you?”

“Sweetie, you know - you know I can’t stay-“

“Then why did you even come back?!” she says.  

“Wait, wait, you’re o-overreacting, you didn’t let me finish - I can’t stay b-because -”

Stan sees that manic light come into Rick’s eyes, the wheels spinning in his head right before he decides to do something stupid and land them both in hot water...

“Because - because you're gonna come live with me and Stanley, it's gonna - gonna be a whole new thing, Beth, we’re gonna start all over."

“What-” Stan starts to say, but Rick talks straight over him.

“You like the beach, right? We’re gonna live on an island, on the beach, just - just sun and waves and relaxation, f-far away from government o-oversight.”

“Really?”

“And - and we’re gonna go right now.” He stands up rapidly, knocking his chair over with a clatter.  The conversation at the other tables goes suddenly quiet.  

“But what about my - my clothes, and my things, and - and school -” she says, panicked.  

“Your things? You don't need that shit, you think any of that matters in real life? None of that matters when you’re dead, you think you get a fucking scorecard at the end of your life, you were a good person if you were good at school and never murdered anyone, I mean…This is the - this is the call to adventure right here, baby, and you better wake up and - and smell the - you better listen to that.. that call...” He drains the rest of his glass.

"Rick," Stan says warningly.

“Hell, let’s get out of here,” Rick says, and goes to the door.  

“Excuse me, sir, your check!” says the waitress.

“You want my money? Here, take it! Eat my ass, biiitch!”  Rick takes the envelope, throws the money in the air, and walks out with Beth in tow.  

“For fuck’s sake!” Stan says.  There’s his pain and labor scattered out over the greasy tiles… He picks handfuls of cash off the floor, swearing.  

He’s jamming crumpled bills into his pockets as he stumbles out the door after them.

“Rick!” Stan shouts.  

Rick doesn’t turn around or stop walking.  Stan grabs him by the scruff of his jacket and spins him around.  

“ _Listen to me, you dumb motherf_ -” he stops himself short, remembers: children present.  

“How ‘bout you wait in the car for a moment, kid,” Stan says.  “Me and your dad need to have a little talk.”

He slings his arm over Rick’s shoulder as he walks him out of sight.  Breathes in.  Don’t lose it, Stanley...

“Wanna tell me what the fuck you think you’re doing?” he says levelly.  

“I’m - I’m reconnecting with my fucking daughter, Stanley,” Rick says.  

“We’ve already got the cops up our ass, Rico’s boys probably already have a fucking pair of bullets picked out for us - you wanna throw some kidnapping in there, make a big fucking scene, just have our names and faces out there in big strobing lights? Hell of a fucking low profile!”

“You’re fffuckin paranoid, Stanley.  Rico doesn’t know where we are, he’s p-probably shitting his fuckin pants after what we pulled - ”

“The plan was to come in, make your goddamn amends, and get out.  This, this was not part of the plan.”  
“I can do wha-at I want, Stanley”

“You’re out of fucking control! And what about the girl, you really want to pull her into this mess? She’s safe here, Rick, she’s got friends, family - ”

“ _I’m_ her f-f-fucking family,” Rick snarls, “She’s miserable here, she’s wasting her potential, and I’m not going to let her stay here growing up with her mother telling her… fucking lies about me-”

“How are you even going to take care of a kid, genius?”

“What the - what the fuck is this, Stanley? You think I can’t look after my own daughter?” Rick rounds on him, all hellfire and spittle.  “You - you think you're some kind of authority - some kind of, kind of figure of p-parental responsibility? You f-fucking low-life bottom feeder piece of shit, when was the last time you had to worry about anything besides your own ass -”

“Why are you choosing this moment to fucking care! You don’t talk to the fucking kid for years, but it’s important now, right when it’s gonna screw us both over?!”

Rick comes at him, and it’s not a fight, it’s a fucking embarrassment - he swings too wild and Stan grabs his wrist, tries to get a good grapple on him without pulling at his wounded shoulder.  Rick barely weighs anything, but he struggles like an animal, tries to kick Stan in the shin.  Probably can’t feel anything from the goddamn drugs, Stan thinks, wishes he couldn’t either as Rick drives the heel of his shoe into his leg.  

“- you piece of shit -” Rick spits.

“Stop it,” Stan says darkly

“- you think you can judge me, you think you can tell me what to do -”

Stan wrestles him to the ground, scrapes his knee on the pavement.  

“Okay, okay,” Rick snaps.  Stan lets him up.  They sit together on the curb awkwardly.  

Rick doesn’t apologize, but he strokes Stan’s arm, restless.     

“She - she got really tall,” he says.

Stan doesn’t say anything.  

“Fuck.”  He sniffs, blinking rapidly.  “Stanley, when the fuck would I see her again?”

“Rick…”

“She’s gonna grow up without me in this shithole town, go to some shithole high school, get knocked up by some schmuck on prom night, have two below-average kids, compromise on e-everything, get chewed up and spat out by the fuckin - fuckin institutional machine, and I’ll be gone, I’ll just be - I’ll just be something she tells her th-therapist about - ”

“That’s oddly specific, Rick.”

“She’s gotta come with us now, we’ll start a new life in the f-fucking - Cayman Islands or wherever the fuck you said, all of us.  You, me, and Beth.  We’ll be - we’ll be like a goddamn family.”

Stan snorts in laughter.  

“This is the first time I feel like I have a chance, okay? A chance to do the right thing.  Isn’t that what you want, Stanley, for me to fucking.. take responsibility?”

“Yeah, this ain’t what I meant.  I’m telling you this is a real fucking bad idea,” Stan says.

“Just t-trust me, Stanley.  I’ll take care of her.  I got us out of the cartel safe and sound, didn’t I?”

“That didn’t exactly go according to plan, asshole,” Stan says.  

“But we’re still alive,” Rick says.

“Yeah…”

“We’re fucking rich…”

“In theory.”

“It’s gonna work,” Rick says, shifting forward, “B-because you and me, Stanley, we’re - we’re fucking unstoppable,” and he grabs at Stan’s face, kisses him with teeth, sloppy and conciliatory.

And Stan is weak, Stan has no common sense for Rick, Stan will bend every time…

He presses his forehead against Rick’s.  

“Alright,” Stan says.

“Alright?”

“Yeah, fuck it, what’s the worst than can happen?” He pulls Rick up to his feet, a little roughly.  “Let’s get your kid, let’s get back on the damn road.”

“B-beautiful.  Listen, I - I gotta take a leak, Stanley.  Why don’t you and Beth go and - and have yourselves a little chat, b-bonding, family, all that.  I think it’ll be - it’ll be real narratively satisfying, Stanley.”

“What?” Stan starts, but Rick is already walking away.

 

\---

 

When Stan gets back to the car, Beth is sitting cross-legged in the back seat with the door open.  He wonders how much of their conversation she overheard, but she says nothing as he comes up.  

He sighs, leans against the car, pats his pocket for a cigarette.  He can feel the girl’s eyes boring into him.  

“Smoking is bad for you,” she says.  

“No kiddin’,” he says, and lights it.  

She wrinkles her nose and turns away.  She’s gotten a big door-jam book out of her backpack - the thing's as big as her head.  Stan scans the cover - Color Atlas of Cardiovascular Medicine.  

“What is that?” He plucks it out of her hands, hefts it consideringly.  “Could really do some damage to somebody with this..”

“Hey, give it back!” she says, but he’s already raised it above his head to examine it, leafs through it - a maze of dense text and anatomical diagrams.  Elementary school kid reading stuff like this - really must be Rick’s daughter.

“I’m studying,” she says by way of explanation, “Volunteering at a vet office

“So you wanna be a vet when you grow up, huh? You like, uh, cats and dogs?” He scratches his unshaven jaw.  “Ponies and stuff?”

“No, I’m going to be a heart surgeon,” she says shortly.  “I wanted to volunteer at a real hospital but my mom said I was too young, which is so unfair, she doesn’t let me do anything...  I’m definitely qualified, I’ve taken first aid classes - I’ve even performed emergency surgery!”

“Surgery, what?”

“...Well, this kid in my class got a pea stuck in his ear during recess and I picked it out with a pair of tweezers, but -”

Stan laughs.  "Lighten up, kid, you're what, 9? Too young to be spending your time with your head in a book,” he says - and that, of course, brings his thoughts unwelcome to his brother.  Bright kids who know exactly where they want to go in life, huh…

“I’m almost 11,” she says defensively, “And Dad went to college early, so..”

“Yeah? I guess smarts run in the family, huh?” he says.   _Well, not always..._

Stan, flipping pages mindlessly, lands on a black-and-white photograph of someone’s open chest cavity, grey organs glistening, and feels suddenly light-headed.  He shuts the book with a heavy thunk.  

She’s looking at him, her expression difficult to read.

“So are you like... my dad’s bodyguard or something?”

“Look like a real thug, huh, don’t I?” he says, grins wide at her.  She shrinks back a little and he laughs.  “Nah, Rick’s just a friend of mine.  Business partners, y’know, like he said.”  

“Okay,” she says quietly.  “But Dad _is_ in trouble, right?”

Fucking Rick… Stan doesn’t think about Jorge lying twisted on the marble floor and the sunlight shining on blood spreading between the tiles, or about the news report playing on the TV at the motel this morning with blurry and unflattering photographs of the pair of them, or the five hundred grand in cash packed into various crevices of the car...

“Nothin’ I can’t handle,” Stan says.  

“You should go to the police,” she starts to say hurriedly, “I know Dad won’t like it, but-”

“No no no,” Stan says, “Nothing we need to involve cops in, okay.”

He gives her the book back.  “Look… I can tell Rick to knock this whole thing off, drive you home. ”

She shakes her head.  “No.  I’m coming.  I can handle it.”

Well, he tried at least.  

“And we should get of town soon, because Mom is going try to pick me up from practice in about twenty minutes and she’ll start freaking out and calling people when she finds out I’m not there.”

“Right.”

“Like the cops.”

“...Right.”

Rick sways back from the drugstore with a couple of black plastic bags.   

“Liquor store was still open, g-got some provisions for the road,” he says.  “Ready to go, sweetheart?”

Beth nods shakily.  

“Let’s get this show on the motherfuckin’ road!”

 

\---

 

It’s close to midnight when Stan reaches some road milestone, back on track to wherever the hell they’re going.  Stan hopes against hope that his contact will wait, that he won’t see the news reports and decide that they’re too hot to risk getting involved.

The girl's finally asleep in the back, and Rick is slumped semi-conscious in the passenger seat, his face slack against the window, strands of his dark hair plastered across his forehead, a thin line of drool escaping his half-open mouth.  

“What’s the worst that could happen?” he’d said to Rick. God, so many things..

He reaches over and picks Rick’s good hand out of his lap, dry and bony-knuckled - rubs his thumb in the hollow of his palm.  A single point of touch, and he wishes he could have more, just to lie with his body pressed next to Rick and think about nothing, and sleep…

Rick mumbles something unintelligible, shifts in his seat, and his fingers slip out of Stan’s grip.    

Stan always was a sucker for bad ideas.  

"We're gonna be okay," he says to himself, and maybe believes it.


End file.
